Page 12 of The Thing About My Secret Billionaire

I rub my fingers through my hair. “What’s up here?”

“Storage, mainly.”

I round the end of the stairs and start to climb them.

“Totally not to code.” I point at a non-existent railing.

She shrugs. “It’s hardly used.”

I pause halfway up. “Are these stairs safe, by the way?”

“As far as I know,” she says, following me up.

The loft area is the full width of the barn, with a small window at either side. I’d bet if you put a giant window all the way along the back it would give an amazing view over the countryside.

Immediately I’m seeing architectural renderings of a luxury home with skylights and white plaster walls between the original beams. A huge country kitchen with professional stainless-steel appliances and a giant center island. A double height living room with a huge sofa facing a modern take on a traditional wood stove. And a massive bedroom up here—an en suite with a clawfoot soaker tub right under the window with the best view.

“Ever thought of dividing up the landand selling the parcel with this barn on it?” I ask her. “It’s a designer home waiting to happen.”

This perfectly natural question—natural to me anyway—has the side benefit of bringing up the subject of selling the land, giving me a chance to feel her out.

She makes a sneering sound. “Not dividing up anything. Not selling any part of it.”

“That sounds definite. And like you’ve given it thought.”

“I’ve had to. But not much. About one-point-three-five seconds is all it took.”

“You’re attached to the place then, huh?” I wander to the other side of the loft where it looks like someone’s been camping, and continue my oh-so-casual questions. “So why have you had to consider whether to sell?”

“Developers are sniffing around,” she says. “Construction’s about to start on a new rail link to Grand Central, and there’ll be a station just about…” The floor shakes a little as she marches past me toward the small window. “See that bunch of pine trees way on the other side of that brown field? Over there.”

I move alongside her, bending my knees to crouch a little so I can follow her sightline through the low window. To see what she’s pointing at, I have to move so close that I get the scent of decidedly un-small-town hair products. The expensive-smelling concoction is sweet but natural. And would be more at home in a luxurious Beacon Hill spa than at a rundown donkey sanctuary in the Hudson Valley.

Who is she? And how can anyone be these two things at once?

“Yes, I see them,” I murmur.

“That’s where the station’s going to be. The line will go in between the trees and the river on the other side.”

“Got it,” I say as if I didn’t already know all of this and it’s not the only reason I’m here. “That must make this land pretty valuable. I mean, you could probably fit”—I pretend to do the math from scratch like I haven’t already sized up the site—“maybe ten condo buildings on it?”

In Boston, or the suburbs, I’d put thirty buildings on seventy-five acres, but I don’t want to shock her. And, anyway, in a small rural town like this you’d need at least a nod to sensitivity to get past the planners.

We straighten simultaneously, her outstretched arm accidentally brushing mine when she reels it in.

“Condos?” she says, like I’d just uttered the most profane profanity imaginable. “Why would anyone wantcondoshere?”

I’m my own worst enemy. Of course I thought of condos first. Condos are my fucking life. I need to be more careful not to allow myself to relax so much around Frankie that I slip up and am accidentally too much myself.

“I just thought that would be the natural high-density development to go near a rail line. You know, allow more people who work in New York City to escape the astronomical living costs and move up here for a better quality of life, but still be able to commute and keep their jobs.” That’s certainly part of the argument I would make to a local council.

“You mean, for the developers to cram in as many people as they can to make as much money as they can?”

I open my mouth to say something about not all developers being heartless bastards andthat some of them create top-quality living experiences, but she continues before I can get out even the first syllable.

“The town would never give permission for that,” she says. “The council’s pretty useless, but not so terrible that they’d approvecondos.” She imbues the word with more disgust than might be reserved for a soggy mound of steaming donkey diarrhea. “Townhouses. The shitty developer wants to build townhouses. There’s already a precedent for that from a development that ruined the other side of town a few years ago. So yeah, this shitbag wants to do the same here.”

“But he won’t, because you’re not selling, right?” I ask, trying to sound supportive.